They’re trying to turn me into an Anglophile

It’s always good to see foreign governments promoting sensible motions like this:

That this House shares the concerns of the British Centre for Science Education that the literature being sent to every school in the United Kingdom by the creationist religious group Truth in Science is full of scientific mistakes and fails to disclose the group’s creationist beliefs and objectives; and urges all schools to treat this literature with extreme caution.

[links added by me.]

The BCSE is a good new group organized to combat the slowly growing creationist movement in the UK, while Truth In Science is one of those ironically named theopseudoscientific outfits that recently got some attention because it mailed a “resource pack” of two DVDs (source of one is the Discovery Institute, and Focus in the Family for the other) and creationist literature to every school and college science department head in England—they’ve got some money!

Here in the US, I’d expect to subsequently some pandering government toad promoting some motion applauding an action like that of “Truth in Science”—it looks like the first response in the UK is to condemn it, and condemn it accurately.

Eat your heart out, Wilkins!

Since John Wilkins also made the pilgrimage to Down House this past July, we had to one-up him and find something he hadn’t seen—and here it is. There was a laboratory space behind the greenhouses that he hadn’t been able to enter, but we could, and inside was a beehive and…worm pots!

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The placard simply says that Darwin studied worms for the last two years of his life, and includes a few paragraphs from his worm work. There they are, three dead-looking pots on a bare shelf. Writhe in envy, Wilkins! Now you’re going to have to book a flight to London to catch up with us.

Utter nonsense

What the hell? How can the BBC News publish this tripe?

But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.

Physical appearance, driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility, will improve, he says, while men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises.

Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features, he adds. Racial differences will be ironed out by interbreeding, producing a uniform race of coffee-coloured people.

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Home again

I’m back!

Well, sorta. I spent 22 hours traveling from London to Morris yesterday, and didn’t get home until 1am. I got about 3 hours sleep before the circadian rhythms kicked in, and my suprachiasmatic nucleus started kicking the reticular formation into high alert, trying to convince it I was dawdling in bed far too long. I tried fighting it until 6am, when there was no more hope—the SCN was now telling my whole body it was lunch time. So I’m awake and physiologically confused, a state that will probably worsen over the day.

I have noticed that while I was off frolicking in the UK, traffic to Pharyngula has dropped off precipitously to less than two thirds it’s previous level. This will not do. Who would have thought you’d all be so fickle that you’d stop reading the site merely because there was a dearth of fresh content? I’ll try to ramp up the new material as well as I can, so come back! You know, some people, like the Neurophilosopher and Simon Middlemiss and the guy at Darwin Building went so far as to track me down and see me in person, so I don’t think asking you all to visit my site 20 or 30 times a day even when there’s nothing new to read is too much to ask.

Speaking of “tracking down” and “snark”, you may recall that we pestered Dawkins in his lair. One of the things we talked about is his upcoming appearance on American television: Dawkins was on the Colbert Report. You can watch it now (in that horribly ugly, clumsy Windows Media Player format), or better yet, here it is on YouTube:

(By the way, the UK cover is not shiny and silver, it’s black and red.)

I know he was a little nervous about the show, just because Colbert is such a weirdly inverted parody of a right-wing talk show, but I think he did well. He got in a few of his main points—that you can’t disprove the existence of gods, but that they are highly improbable, evolution is not solely random, science is not determined democratically—which is good enough, considering the way that show usually ravages its guests in such a sneaky way. I thought Dawkins zinged Colbert as well as can be expected when he pointed out that Colbert’s rationalizing that “god just did us” was the simplest explanation was defeated by the question “Who did god?”

Now…must get coffee.

A visit to Downe

You want to see a few more of my travel pictures, don’t you? Yesterday, we got on the Seven Oaks line leaving Victoria Station, and ended up at Bromley South, where we were met by our faithful native guide, Robin Levett. He drove us through narrow, winding country roads to the tiny town of Downe. Downe is very picturesque and old country English, but we left it (after refreshing ourselves at the pub, which seems to be a mandatory tradition here, and after meeting Louis, another gentleman who joined us on our journey) to walk a mile or so down another narrow, tree- and hedge-lined road to end up at a certain country squire’s fine old home.

Here, Larry Moran and I stopped at the entrance, to pose with a picture of the prior owner.

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London Howlerfest

We had a big crowd yesterday—20 or more people showed up at the Natural History Museum for our London Howlerfest. We spent a few hours strolling through the museum, a few more hours at a nearby pub (I don’t recall the name of the pub, but I do remember London Pride, Wildcat, and Wicked Witch), and few hours at a nearby restaurant. I don’t recall the names of all the people that I met there (which makes the fact that I only remember what I was drinking even more embarrassing), but I did take pictures. Browse the collection below the fold, and do me a favor—if you were there, name the people, and ‘fess up if you were one of them. I apologize if you aren’t in any of these, and should be; Larry Moran also took pictures, so I’m hoping that between us we’ll have everyone.

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